Email Quick Assist

What do you need help with?

• Show me how to send email to someone
• Tell me how to get my email
• I can't send email, receive email, or both

Sending email messages with Mail

1) Create a New Message
Open Mail and from the File menu, choose New Message (or click the New button in the Mail window toolbar).

2) Address Your Recipient
In the To field, type your recipient's email address (it should look something like name@domain.com). To send a message to more than one person, insert a comma between each address in the To field, or enter additional addresses in the Cc (short for “carbon copy”) field. Feeling secretive? Mail also features a Bcc (short for “blind carbon copy”) field, which lets you send someone a copy of your message without your other recipients knowing (from the View menu, choose Bcc Address Field to display this field).

3) State Your Purpose
Type something brief in the Subject field that lets your recipient know what your message is about and then type your message in the big white space below your account name. Your account should appear in the Account pop-up menu.

4) Send and Deliver
When you're done typing everything you've got to say, just click Send to mail your message—it's that simple!

Additional Help
All Apple computers come with built-in Mac Help that provides step-by-step instructions to do many activities on your computer. To find out more information about using Mail, open Mail and from the Help menu, choose Mail Help.

Checking for email

1) Checking for Mail Manually
By default, Mail will automatically check for new messages whenever you first open Mail. If you'd like to see if you've got mail, say, now, click Get Mail in the toolbar to check email in all of your accounts, or choose Mailbox > Get New Mail > account to check for mail in a particular account (if you have multiple accounts). If Mail finds new mail, your messages will appear listed in boldface.

2) Have Mail Check Automatically
To set Mail to check for messages automatically, choose Preferences from the Mail menu, then click General in the resulting window. From the Check for new mail pop-up menu, choose a desired time interval. You can also choose a sound from the New mail sound pop-up menu to alert you that new mail has arrived.

3) Sending and Receiving Attachments
You or your buddies may want to send documents, photos, or other files to each other, and Mail makes this easy by way of attachments. To send a file to someone, simply drag the file onto the message window to attach it and then send the message. To save a file from a message sent to you, drag the attached file from the email message to your desktop or other location.

Additional Help
All Apple computers come with built-in Mac Help that provides step-by-step instructions to do many activities on your computer. To find out more information about using Mail, open Mail and from the Help menu, choose Mail Help.

Top 10 troubleshooting tips

1) Use the Connection Doctor
If you're using Mac OS X 10.4 or later, have the Connection Doctor make a house call. In Mail, choose Connection Doctor from the Window menu to have it check your server connections. If it finds any trouble, it'll display a red Status indicator next to the problematic account and provide some information and advice in the Details column. If you see a red indicator, follow the doctor's advice to try and fix the issue.

2) Make Sure That You're Connected to the Internet
To send and receive email, your Mac must be connected to the Internet. To verify whether your connection is working, open your web browser and visit any website. If your Internet connection doesn't appear to be working, see our Internet Quick Assist to get your connection back up and running.

3) Ask for Permission if You're Being Denied
If a sheet appears that says you need permission when you try to send email, your computer's administrator has restricted email access for your account. To request permission from your administrator to send the message, click Ask Permission in the dialog.

4) Make Sure That You're Not Being Blocked by a Firewall
If you or a network administrator has a firewall blocking email traffic on port 25, 465, or 587, you may not be able to send email. If you've installed firewall software separately from Mac OS X, try temporarily disabling it to see if you can send email. There may also be firewall software built into a shared Internet router or administered by your ISP or network administrator; contact the appropriate person to find out if a firewall exists.

5) Check Your Email Settings
Open Mail preferences (from the Mail menu, choose Preferences), click Accounts, and verify the settings for your account in question. If you can't send email, make sure that you're using your ISP's SMTP server, or “smtp.mac.com” if you have a .Mac account, for the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) setting. If you can't receive email, make sure that you're using your ISP's incoming mail server, or “mail.mac.com” if you have a .Mac account, for the Incoming Mail Server setting. Check with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or network administrator if you're unsure about what settings to use—especially if you've changed some Advanced options in Mail preferences, such as SSL or authentication to access an account remotely.

6) Send Yourself an Email
If you can send email from your account but you're not sure whether or not you're able to get any, send yourself an email. Your message will go out through your outgoing mail server and back in through your incoming mail server. After sending yourself a test email, wait a minute or so for the servers to send the data, then click Get Mail in Mail (wait a little longer if you still haven't gotten it yet). If you don't get your own email after waiting about 15 minutes, try these other tips.

7) Find Out if Your Mail Servers Can Be Reached
Open Network Utility (/Applications/Utilities) and click the Ping tab. Ping is a utility that lets you test whether a server is running or not and if it can be reached from your computer. If you can't send email, type the outgoing server address in the top field (it'll look something like smtp.company.com). If you're not able to receive email, type the incoming server address in the top field (it'll look something like mail.company.com). Then click the Ping button. If you see 10 repeating lines, your computer can successfully reach the server. If you see a message that says something like “unknown host,” the server is either down or unreachable. Wait a while and then try sending or getting email again. (Please note that this test does not work with .Mac accounts.)

8) Check If Your Account is Using the Email Servers
To check if all servers are in use by your accounts, open Mail preferences, click Accounts, then click Account Information. From the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) pop-up menu, choose Edit Server List to display a list of servers. If you see an entry in the “In Use By Account” column for a server, that server is in use. If you have any servers listed that don't have an entry in this column, select the server, click Remove Server, and then click Done. If you see that your affected account isn't “In Use,” go back to step 5 to reset your server settings.

9) Make Sure That Your Account Isn't Offline
If Mail can't connect to and access your account's incoming server when it checks for messages, it will take your account “offline.” Take a look at your Inbox icon. If it appears dimmed or you see an exclamation point or tilde-looking icon (~) next to it or one of your account names (if you have more than one account), try taking it back online. Click the icon to the right of the affected account's name or select the account and choose Mailbox > Online Status > Take “account name” Online.

10) Reset Your Email Account
Try deleting your email account from Mail and then setting the account back up again. Before you do this, save all messages that you want to keep in a different mailbox on your Mac (to create a new Mailbox, choose New Mailbox from the Mailbox menu, choose On My Mac from the Location pop-up menu, type a name for your mailbox, click OK, and then drag the messages that you want to keep to this new mailbox). To delete the account, choose Preferences from the Mail menu, then click Accounts. Make note of the information for the account you want to reset, then select the account in the Accounts list and click the remove (-) button. To recreate your account, click the add (+) button and reenter the information for your account. You can then drag all of your messages from the alternate mailbox back into your newly recreated account.